Reception:
Friday, August 14, 2020 | 7-10 pm
Gallery Talk at 8 pm

Target Gallery presents 3rd annual exhibition featuring the work of four regional emerging artists. This exhibition spotlights new talent and the up-and-coming artistic innovators of the D.C. metropolitan area.

Featured Artists

MK Bailey, “Grandma’s Kitchen”, 2019. Oil on Canvas.

MK Bailey, is a Washington, D.C. based artist working primarily in oil paint. Her work explores themes such as femininity, kinship, and death through unexpectedly colorful paintings. Each painting contains layers of imagery that are individually pleasant but collaged together to create a darker narrative. The work featured in this exhibition, take a slightly different approach to presenting the deeper world reference her own feelings of nostalgia encapsulated by a specific thought, memory, or dream. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia.

Mahsa R. Fard, “Stadium II”, 2019. Acrylic on Canvas.

Mahsa R. Fard,is a painter currently residing in Baltimore, MD. She often paints man-made large scale structures such as cities, stadiums, and apparatuses. She tends to create a new association by introducing unusual color and spatial relationships. Growing up in Iran, she has always been conscious of the dominance of rigid patriarchal gaze both in the public and private sphere. Accessing public and private domains as a female requires subversive strategies. Her imagery reflects a woman’s forced duplicitous roles in these domains. Mahsa contemplates and practice these strategies in her painting and writing through metaphors of censorship, sarcasm, camouflage, cover, and disguise. Mahsa has recently graduated from LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

Zia Palmer, “Richardson Store,” 2019. Photography.

Zia Palmer, is a D.C. metro area based artist focused on graphic design and photography. She received her BFA in photography and minor in graphic design from George Mason University. Zia’s photography practice focuses on historic photographic processes and explores the relationship and liminality between time, memory and place. The artwork featured in this exhibition will explore Zia’s “Las Orillas Del Mundo” series, a project that investigates being Mexican, American, and neither. The work is a compilation of photography, found objects, and family photos. Over the past two years Zia has traveled to specific ghost towns in New Mexico where her grandmother and ancestors were born.  She brings her mother and grandmother with her each time which has served as a way to reconnect to their heritage, some thing that has felt distant from them over time.

Latrelle Rostant, “Closer to the Unimagined”, 2019. Modular loom made of birch plywood, hardware, cotton fiber and metallic.

Latrelle Rostant, is a Maryland-based artist who primarily works with textile and fiber. She has a BFA  from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA at School of Art Institute of Chicago, with a concentration in Fiber and Materials. Through woven textiles, Latrelle explores what it means to be too foreign for the place she comes from, and the spaces she now occupies. Her work embraces the the carnival culture of her native Trinidad and Tobago which has become a space where the culture of those who were bought or came to the island are able make something that reflected, this third place for the new culture they became a part of. Each culture taking their own culture and adapting it to what they encountered when they arrived to the islands. Taking the prompt of adaptation Latrelle has adapted the loom to make objects, that like the artist, do not inherently reflect how they were made. The modular loom she created for this exhibitions, allows her to make woven objects that not only respond to how they are warped on it, but they also respond to what the artist sees as she is weaving on the modular loom. Looking at and understanding how tools, technique, space, and material can be used to make objects that cause  to reflect her own understanding of self. A third place that is the intersection of the place that she came form and the places that she now occupies.

Juror Bios

Alexandra “Rex” Delakaran is a interdisciplinary artist from San Francisco, California. After earning her BFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, she relocated to Washington, DC working in local galleries. She performs and exhibits her work along the coast, working out of Red Dirt Studios, and on curatorial projects of her own.

Jaynelle C. Hazard develops, implements and oversees progressive, contemporary programming initiatives in the main gallery spaces at Workhouse Arts Center. In her brief time with the organization, she has implemented over 30 exhibitions with blockbuster shows including: Imagination is the Medium – an exhibit highlighting the works of Jim Henson’s original illustrator, Guy Gilchrist and puppeteer, Bill Diamond; and Compounds Not Required – a group show co-curated with Tiffany Williams from Art in Embassies exploring works of six artists and the origin of metals back to the periodic table.

In previous roles, she has supported various art programs and worked with some of the most celebrated artworks through her experience in managing the corporate contemporary art collection at UBS, the Union Bank of Switzerland, and via her work at Blank Projects, contemporary art gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Significant milestones throughout Hazard’s career include curating lounge installations at Art Basel Miami Beach, administering the production and launch of the publication UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom published by Hatje Cantz and in supporting the transition of a historical, promised gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jaynelle Hazard recently relocated to Washington from New York where she earned a Master of Arts degree at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Hazard is committed to being an ambassador of cultural heritage and looks forward to continuing the development of rich, inspirational experiences in the community locally and globally.

Amy Lokoff is a creative economy catalyst based in Washington, DC. She uses her work to explore inclusive community building, the power of the arts as a tool for social engagement, the value of resource sharing, and financial sustainability for creatives. Over the past 10 years, she has worked with over 250 visual and performing artists and coordinated exhibitions and arts programming in a variety of venues across the DC metropolitan area including Anacostia Arts Center, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Otis Street Arts Project, and Torpedo Factory Art Center. Her exhibitions have been covered in The Washington Post, DCist, 730DC, and East City Art. Amy currently works as the project manager for WRAPture, temporary public art piece addressing climate change by artist and activist Monica Jahan Bose created in collaboration with DC residents and organizations. She also serves as the Visual Arts Curator for Little Salon, a monthly arts event that takes place in intimate spaces around DC.

Image Credit: MK Bailey, Grandma’s Kitchen, 2019. Oil in Canvas.

Opening Reception
Friday, June 12 | 7-10 pm
Gallery Talk at 8pm

In this nationally competitive opportunity, one artist is selected by a panel of experts to mount a solo exhibition in Target Gallery . In 2020, Tai Hwa Goh creates site-specific kinetic paper sculptures that bloom, but warp over time with repeated human interaction, much like artificial selection compared to the wild. She explores the historical, sociological, and psychological influences that have shaped floristry and human desire to mold the environment.

About the Jurors

Isabel Manalo is a visual artist who has been showing her work internationally since 1999. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections such as the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, the permanent collections of the US Embassies in Bulgaria, Philippines, Kazakhstan and Nepal. Her work has been shown at the Orlando Museum of Art, Stony Brook University’s Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, the McLean Project for the Arts, Arlington Arts Center, Maryland Art Place, the Katzen Arts Center, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has been the subject of group and solo shows in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Orlando, New York and Berlin. She was featured in New American Paintings in 2004 and 2006 and was awarded a Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2008, 2009 and 2011 with support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation for 2009. Manalo’s work is included in the Drawing Center and White Columns curated artist registries. Isabel is the Founder and Chief Collaborator of The Studio Visit (TSV), an art journal featuring artist interviews with artists in their studios. Her work with the Takt International Artist Residency as a Visiting Artist and Curator continues today with a newly launched (2018) Berlin Fellowship Award that supports one female artist of color to spend one month in Berlin at the Takt Residency.

Her work is represented in Washington D.C. by Addison Ripley Fine Art where she has had four solo shows in 2009, 2012, 2016 and 2018/19. Her next solo show is at the Facebook DC offices from September – December 2019. This past June, a solo exhibition of Maia Cruz Palileo opened at the Katzen Art Center at American University that Isabel curated. It is up through October 20, 2019. She served on the Board of Directors and the Visual Arts Committee for the District of Columbia Arts Center from 2010 – 2012. From 2012 – 2013 she served as a Visiting Artist and Curator at Takt International Artist Residency in Berlin where she lived with her family from 2012 – 2015. She currently teaches full time at the Edmund Burke School and prior to that taught at American University and George Mason University. Isabel received her MFA in Painting from Yale University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Isabel currently lives and works in Bethesda, MD.

Jackie Milad (Baltimore City, MD) Creates textured works on paper and canvas. Her artwork has been featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include: Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia, PA), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore, MD), Phoebe Projects curated by Alex Ebstein (Baltimore, MD), Lycoming College (Lycoming, PA), Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA), Flashpoint (Washington D.C.), Museo de Arte de Mazatlan (Mazatlan, MX), DiFOCUR de Sinaloa Galleria (Culiacan, MX), Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY), Arlington Art Center (Arlington, VA), Goucher College, Silber Gallery (Baltimore, MD). In 2010, 2016, 2019 Milad was awarded an individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2018 she was named a Sondheim Semi-Finalist and in 2019 a Sondheim Finalist. Jackie was an inaugural resident of Creative Alliance at the Patterson and also held a residency at Vermont Studio Center. Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, and her MFA from Towson University. Besides her active studio practice, Jackie Milad also has an extensive career as a curator and educator, where she has committed many years to the education and support of emerging artists.

Jackie’s curatorial career began as a co-founder of the Transmodern Festival, an artist-run performance art and experimental media festival that was based in Baltimore. More recently, Milad served as the Chief Curator for The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, Delaware. She has also held the position of Gallery Curator for the Adele H. Stamp Student Union’s Stamp Gallery and Acquisition Advisor for the Stamp’s Contemporary Art Collection at the University of Maryland in College Park. Currently Jackie is an Assistant Director for the Joseph Meyerhoff Center of Career Development, and an Adjunct Professor in Curatorial Practice MFA Program at Maryland Institute College of Art.

Don Russell has been an active contemporary art curator and arts administrator since 1979. His research focuses on the exploration and development of new social contexts for art. He is currently GMU’s University Curator, responsible for programming exhibitions and public art on the Fairfax, Manassas and Arlington campuses. Additionally he directs Provisions Research Center for Art & Social Change, providing creative resources for community-engaged public art projects. He is co-founder with Edgar Endress of Floating Lab Collective. Don has produced over one hundred exhibitions as well as public art commissions, residencies, conferences and field projects. His work spans all contemporary art media with particular emphasis on research-as-art, public art, new media, photography and artists’ publications.

Don has extensive experience managing and directing contemporary arts, philanthropic and publishing ventures. He is President of Art Resources International and previously served as Executive Director of Washington Project for the Arts and had various leadership roles at Visual Studies Workshop.

The newest group exhibition in Target Gallery, the contemporary exhibitions space of Torpedo Factory Art Center, offers a poignant look at love and relationships for LGBTQ+-identifying people.

My Queer Valentine explores love through non-heteronormative and non-binary relationships. The exhibition features 16 artists, 8 who are from Virginia or the D.C. greater metropolitan area.

Participating Artists

Nicholas Aiden, St. John’s, NL, Canada
Veronica Barker-Barzel (Studio 320), Alexandria, VA
Brandin Barón, San Francisco, CA
Adam David Bencomo, Baltimore, MD
Miki Beyer, Herndon, VA
Louis Chavez, Rochester, NY
Mandy Chesney, Baltimore, MD
Evin Dubois, Paducah, KY
Aurele Gould, Richmond, VA
Cat Gunn, Baltimore, MD
Linda Hesh, Alexandria, VA
Rachael McArthur, Brooklyn, NY
Annika Papke, Alexandria, VA
Lucas J. Rougeux, North Bethesda, MD
Todd Stonnell, Richmond, VA
Matt Storm, Washington, DC

Exhibition juror Andy Johnson, a D.C.-based independent curator and gallery director of Gallery 102 at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at The George Washington University, has dedicated much of his curatorial career to unpacking queer intimacy.

“While My Queer Valentine has everything to do with the relationship to those around us, it’s also equally invested in the relationship we have with our queer realities, and the ways in which queerness shapes and informs our lived experience,” he said. “My Queer Valentine is as much a love letter to ourselves as it is a disclosing of longing to our community.”

Queerness or identifying as LGBTQ+ encapsulates many identities that are not necessary set within a spectrum. This diversity in perspective is represented in a various styles, mediums, and tones in this exhibition.

For instance, Aurele Gould has three works on view that explore concepts of intimacy for queer women through different narrative portraits of her girlfriend. Alex captures the act of undressing, creating a flirtatious dialogue between the subject and the viewer.

Matt Storm has two works from his Act of Looking series, which articulates and recognizes inclusive ways to see his trans body. The piece Act of Looking II, 17, Crossing My Fingers, Getting Away with Something is a playful love letter to the artist’s sexuality as a transmasculine person.

Artist Miki Beyer’s mixed-media work You’re Already There. You Already Have Me. is also a love-letter, but this time between the artist and their partner. They use dialogue from past conversations between the two of them that addresses the panic of identity-erasure as a non-binary person while in cisgender/heterosexual-presenting relationship. It also speaks to the love for each other that promises for a better tomorrow.

Don’t miss the special Valentine’s themed reception on Friday, February 14, 7 – 10 pm, with juror talk at 8 pm. The evening features interactive performance art, a photo op at our kissing booth, and DIY art-making activities. Learn more about and support local LGBTQ+ organizations, too.

About the Juror

Andy Johnson is a DC-based art historian, curator, and arts writer. He is Director of Gallery 102 at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design; contributing editor at DIRT; and serves as Assistant Curator and Artist Liaison for Art on the Vine, hosted by the Agora Culture. He was the 2018 Apprentice Curator for the DC Arts Center, and a 2019 Visiting Arts Writer and Critic for The Chart. He has curated and juried exhibitions with Gallery 102, DC Arts Center, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Dupont Underground, the Smithsonian Institution, among others. He has presented research and spoken on panels at universities, galleries, and museums including Rutgers University, UC Santa Barbara, University of Georgia, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, GW Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, and others. He has published articles, exhibition reviews, and catalogue essays with DIRT, The Chart, Common Field’s Field Perspectives, The Rib, Pelican Bomb, BmoreArt and more. He holds a M.A. in Art History from The George Washington University.

Image: Aurele Gould, Acrylic, 2017, Photograph.